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Thursday, August 24, 2006

Enter the Purple Line

The Daily News revisits City Councilman Bernard Parks' obsession with the new Metro Aqua line, which he thinks should be called the "Exposition Line" -- despite the fact that every other train line is named after a color.

We wrote about it last month, noting Park's obsession with dropping the well-liked "Aqua" designation. He also wants the line to be "rose-colored" on Metro maps -- adding to the confusion, since the line doesn't go anywhere close to Pasadena, home to the Rose Bowl and Rose parade. Yeah, I know, there's a rose garden in Exposition park -- but c'mon. Parks is spending way too much time fretting over this. Aqua makes sense, especially if the line eventually hits the ocean, as planned.

Meanwhile, the MTA was set to vote Wednesday night on finally decided to rename one of its two red lines. As you probably know, the red line subway actually consists of two different spurs. I always thought it was odd that there were two different routes with the same name -- and apparently, it also tripped up many a rider:

The MTA says passengers are too easily confused by the 17-mile line, which is really two separate lines. One runs from Union Station to the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue and the other operates from Union Station to Hollywood, finally jumping over to the San Fernando Valley.

How long until the MTA runs out of colors? I suppose they could always just buy a 64 pack of Crayolas. Can't wait for the "Burnt Sienna line."